22 September 2023
By Tim Koch
Unusually, Tim Koch looks northwards.
In his book, A Social History of English Rowing (1992), Neil Wigglesworth argued that rowing is “the finest barometer of social change provided by the sporting tradition.” Cricketers and others may argue which sport is actually the best meteorological instrument to measure social change but those supporting the cause of oar-related racing certainly have a strong case and one which, unsurprisingly, is accepted here.
Thirty years ago, Wigglesworth complained that the British literature of rowing has dwelt almost exclusively upon factual reviews of those activities directly or indirectly affected by Oxbridge influences. He continued, noting the “stranglehold” that Oxbridge graduates have had upon the administration of (rowing) and their lack of interest in unfashionable and socially questionable provincial matters.
It is true that to adopt the default position of most British rowing historians (myself often included) and to look at amateur rowing exclusively through the Southern English lens of the Thames, Henley and Oxbridge would be a great mistake. These centres of rowing were also often centres of snobbery, privilege and vested interests and were sometimes at variance with changes happening in the wider world.
Wigglesworth’s book grew out of his PhD and he examined rowing and social change by an historical examination of rowing clubs and regattas around Britain. Here, I am going to be considerably less ambitious.
I will be looking at only one rowing event, Chester Regatta, sited in northwest England, 20 miles from Liverpool but 200 miles from the pernicious influence of London and which claims that it is “the world’s oldest regatta.” This study is absolutely not a complete history of the event, and it will not go up to “modern times”. It is in fact a seven-part historical inquiry into amateurism using Chester Regatta as a case study. As an aside, I will also note Chester’s history of offering races for women, specifically fishermen’s wives and daughters.
My main original sources are the Chester Chronicle (copies of which exist for 1775-1776 and 1789-1999) and the Chester Courant (published between 1776 and 1900 but copies are missing for 1807-1808, 1830 and 1872). To a lesser extent, I have also used the Cheshire Observer (1854-1989).
My main reference works are limited: Glass and Patrick’s Royal Chester Rowing Club Centenary History (1939), Wigglesworth’s 1992 Social History and the rather slight booklet, 1000 Years of Rowing on the Dee (2003) by Keith Osborne.
Unfortunately, the studies of both Wigglesworth and Osborne suffer from the fact that they were researched when the Internet was young and Glass and Patrick when it was non-existent. Today, I can accurately search newspaper archives from home in seconds while Wigglesworth et al had to physically trawl original papers or microfiche copies, a laborious task that was both time consuming and prone to inaccuracies.
Further, while Osborne was a splendid and indefatigable editor of the British Rowing Almanack for many years, he did not seem to apply the same rigour to his 1000 Years. For example, he reproduces without comment the unlikely tale of King Edgar steering a boat rowed by eight kings on Chester’s River Dee in AD 793. He compounds the dubiousness by recording the seat that each monarch rowed in. In my 2015 HTBS piece on Edgar, I note that many distinguished historians are more sceptical about the event.
Also, hopefully Glass and Patrick were joking when they wrote with reference to the King Edgar story: “Modesty alone prevents the Royal Chester Rowing Club from celebrating the millennial anniversary of its foundation… Truly (Edgar’s) was a Chester crew!”
The River Dee flows for 110 miles travelling mostly through Wales and briefly into England and through the city of Chester. The Dee at Chester is 75 miles downriver from the source at Bala in Wales. The river has been used as a navigable waterway for thousands of years and the Romans certainly boated on it. In the early medieval period, Chester was an important port and in Norman times the Earls of Chester built a weir to power water mills. Much later, pleasure boating developed above this weir, mostly over a five-mile stretch to the Iron Bridge at Aldford.
As an aside, the Lord Mayor of Chester is, ex-officio, “The Admiral of the Dee,” a title granted in 1353 when admiralty powers were given to Chester’s first citizen as a way for the King to increase his income from duty and taxes paid by river users. These rights were reduced in 1835 but those remaining have been confirmed as recently as 1974. In his annual ceremonial inspection of twelve miles of the Dee, the Admiral/Lord Mayor carries the Water Bailiff’s Oar, a miniature silver oar fourteen inches long bearing the Chester hallmark for 1719 and a symbol of his or her authority.
1733: Unsubstantiated Claims
It is frequently stated as a matter of fact that Chester Regatta begin in at least 1733 thus making it 290 years (or more) old, much older than the existing Oxford University Head of the River (1815), The Oxford – Cambridge Boat Race (1829) or Henley Royal Regatta (1839).
Osborne states, “…the earliest record of organised boat racing on the Dee was recorded in a print of Chester Regatta in 1733.”
The oldest reference to this print that I can find is from The Field of 11 August 1883 which stated:
According to a local print, the regatta “has been recognised since 1733.”
Sadly, while everyone seems happy to quote the existence of this mysterious print, which is the sole “evidence” for the date 1733, no one has reproduced it or revealed where it could be found.
Were there organised boat races in Chester in 1733? I have no proof, but I would say that it is possible that there were. There were working boats (fishing boats and coracles used by professional watermen, apprentices and women) plying their trade in the city at the time and it is almost human nature that they would have raced each other for amusement and, more importantly, for money earned through gambling. Then as now, sport along with show business were the best ways (and sometimes the only ways) for a working man or woman to make good money legally. As Osborne himself wrote, Rowing matches existed in England on the Thames and other rivers from early times…
However, was whatever happened on the River Dee in Chester in 1733 “a regatta?”. How organised and formal do some boat races have to be before they are awarded this title? It is open to argument, and it is venturing into semantics, but it is generally accepted that a regatta has a series of events often decided by a series of races. I hold that one race (or a final and heats) to decide one winner (as in the case of Doggett’s) does not make a regatta.
It is probably more important that we should recognise that wherever and whenever there were working boats there would have been races between them. There is nothing special about Chester or about 1733 except that a print of some boats apparently racing there and then may have once existed. Even if this much referenced print suddenly reappeared, I doubt that it would prove anything.
The chapter titled “Ancient Customs, Sports and Pastimes” in Joseph Hemingway’s History of Chester (1831) has no mention of early boat racing.
My aim is not to rain (or pass any other sort of liquid) on Chester Regatta’s parade, particularly as it is a splendid and thriving event with good local support that works hard to stay modern and relevant while acknowledging and preserving its past. However, the study of history needs to be more factual than fanciful. When 2033 comes, Chester should not be marking its 300th anniversary, but, as shown below, it could celebrate a still remarkable and historic 219 years of existence (albeit non-continuous). It could still be “the world’s oldest regatta” or, more precisely and pedantically, “the world’s oldest existing open rowing regatta of its kind.” I wait for someone to prove differently.
1814: Firm Facts
In 1814, Britain enjoyed “a summer of celebrations” to mark what appeared to be the final victory over Napoleon. In London’s St James’ Park for example, The Battle of the Nile was recreated by rowing boats on the canal crossed by a Chinese style bridge supporting a seven-storey pagoda. During fireworks, the pagoda caught fire and two men perished, but the crowd thought it was part of the celebrations and cheered the spectacle wildly. Two hundred miles away, Chester was also putting on lavish celebrations, some too on the water.
The earliest newspaper reference to a Chester Regatta that I can find is in the Chester Chronicle of 10 June 1814. Local newspaper records exist from 1775 but there are no eighteenth-century references to regattas in Chester. Most importantly, the Chester Chronicle piece notes that (the 1814 regatta) is a novelty never introduced in Chester:
REGATTA ON THE DEE. Among the festivities announced, in celebration of the (defeat of Napoleon) is a regatta on the River Dee, in this city… We trust (that) it will answer the sanguine expectations of those gentlemen who proposed it; it is a novelty never introduced in Chester, were we to except the ancient “shows” of our forefathers on the river… some 200 years ago.
What were these “shows” of 200 years ago ie around 1614? On St George’s Day 1610, a pageant and various civic festivities took place in Chester to mark the creation of Henry Frederick, son and heir of James VI and I, as Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. A full contemporary account is here but it gives no report of boat racing, only that:
Ships, Barques, and Pinnaces, with other vessels harbouring within the River, displaying the Arms of Saint George upon their main tops… discharged many volleys of shot in honour of the day.
Thus, the local press seems to give firm evidence that, while historically there may have been some unreported races between working boats, a common and widespread occurrence, there was nothing that could be called “a regatta” in Chester before 1814.
Part II, which will be published on Monday, 25 September, will show how, from a simple start, Chester Regatta had to quickly develop more and more complex rules and regulations and how its early fortunes waned more than waxed.